Yeh, I get the gist. Your explanation is much appreciated.
I'll pretty much take your word for the biological details, but it seems to me that 2 years and 1.5 months for a Phase II trial with no results is pretty suspicious in itself. I'm talking about the MLN02 ulcerative colitis trial. On the other hand, it was blinded, so maybe they will announce something very, very soon.
>>CAMBRIDGE, Mass., February 8, 2001 -- Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: MLNM) today announced that a Phase II clinical trial of LDP-02 for ulcerative colitis is now underway in Canada. LDP-02 is an investigational humanized monoclonal antibody for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which includes both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. This multi-center Phase II trial is a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study to determine the safety and effectiveness of LDP-02 in patients with ulcerative colitis.<<
By the way, I agree with Erik on the convertibles. I think MLNM will at least pay back some of them with cash. And if they combine that announcement with the announcement that they are in the process of taking out, say, $300M in annual expenditures so that they'll have sufficient cash to reach profitability - there might be the makings of a nice run-up in the stock price. Right now I think many people are scratching their heads about the convertibles and the revenues vs expenditures and wondering if MLNM is going to have to do a garage sale at some point just to stay alive. Even with Velcade providing them with half of $500M in revenues it is hard to see them being able to break even in 2006 w/o serious cuts in expenses. A lot of revenue-generating partnerships will be expiring before 2006.
On another thought, Erik's speculation that the Velcade partnership might involve another MLNM getting some rights to a 2nd oncology molecule is pretty savvy. By which I mean, of course, that it hadn't occurred to me. I was expecting they would be trolling for cash. I like getting another molecule better. They need sustainable sales more than unsustainable partnership revenue at this point in their evolution. |
